The Matador of Oak Street

This story previously appeared in Cream City Review

My stylish beret worn at a cocky angle, my sunglasses pushed firmly back against the ridge of my nose, I open my front door, peer up and down the street, and step out into the searing light. It’s a real pistol out here. Not so much hot as it is godawful, painfully bright. I stumble to the sidewalk, turn left and begin my long, slow, struggle down Oak Street.

Out here, in the daylight, life is ugly. The neighbors are all lying in wait for me behind their pretty hedges. The sidewalk is a dirty gray and heaves at me as I pass one of those noisy elms. My head is under attack. My stomach is turning, threatening to expose the whole gruesome mess I poured in there last night. The world is a riot of swirling greens, a close-up of Jupiter or Mars seen through colored glasses. I am assailed by visions of fresh water. Across the street The Fat Man is leaning out his front door, grappling with his mailbox for his morning mail. He will win, in a way, but it is something of a struggle at the moment. The Fat Man is cursing The Little Woman for hanging the Son of a Bitch on the wall in the first place. Next door to The Fat Man old lady Bartz is hanging out that faded, dusty, tattered American flag she insists on flying every day. She has clambered onto an old lawn chair and is teetering there, on her front porch, reaching upward and backward to tether the corner of the flag to one of the nails she has driven into the porch ceiling.

I can see her after she has fallen, shattered like a cold porcelain statue.

“Be careful, Mrs. Bartz,” I call. I can’t help myself.

“Harumph,” she grunts in my direction. The flag slaps her face just as she has finished securing it and she grabs hold to keep from falling. She never falls. I’ve seen her in tornadoes, standing there on that beaten porch on that beaten lawn chair taking that goddamn beaten flag down lest it blow away in the gale.

“Morning,” yells The Fat Man. “This Son of a Bitch really pisses me off. I wish The Little Woman would stop trying to improve every goddamn thing.”

“You have to have one, I guess,” I yell back at him. I nearly swoon from the effort. I turn and continue my fraudulent stride down the buckling, pitching sidewalk.

“It’s a couple of blocks down,” The Fat Man shouts after me.

I can picture The Fat Man and The Little Woman sitting around their breakfast sweet rolls and jellied toast discussing my car, and me. “That drunk from across the street will be out lookin’ for his car again,” The Fat Man says. “Poor Mrs. Drunk,” The Little Woman gurgles. “I saw the car down on 68th Street, I think, or anyway, somewhere down in that direction.” They both slobber in their coffees and dunk their toast.

A sudden blast from Zawatski’s siren causes my internal organs to flatten out. I turn slowly to face the patrol car. “You’re a real ball of fire this morning, Officer Zawatski.”

“Hey Wilbur,” he says, hanging onto that “L” like Mr. Ed. “Lose your car again last night? How’s the old temples this morning?” he shouts and gives the siren another blast.

“Why don’t you go arrest some teen-agers?” I tell Zawatski.

“Aw, lighten up, Wilbur,” he says. “I’m going down to The Steamer after work for a couple of beers if you want to come over,” he says.

“Officer Zawatski,” I say, “I thank you for the offer but I will probably be staying home this evening.” My back is arched and my head held high. I rise to occasions like this.

Zawatski harumphs at me and drives away, speeding, showing me the back of his car and himself as quickly as possible. I can hear him laughing.

Zawatski’s siren has driven the neighbors from hiding. They mass in their front yards, awaiting my approach. I steel myself, square my shoulders, and march forward.

By the time I see Adamchack it’s almost too late. He comes roaring down his front lawn pursuing his electric lawn mower. I take a light-footed leap to one side, leaving my stomach hanging there in the air. He crosses the sidewalk, lawn mower flinging rocks and bits of elm tree at my ankles as he passes, to get to his well-manicured tree lawn. His attack beagle, anchored by a nylon line to his front porch, flies after me, but is halted inches from my delicate thigh by the snapping cord.

“Mr. Adamchack,” I say. “You should get a shorter rope for your dog.”

“Naw,” he says, continuing the dogged pursuit of his lawn mower. “Just want to keep the beast in the yard.”

“But he’s going to tear his head off some day.”

Mr. Adamchack disagrees as he turns his lawn mower, before it escapes into the street, and heads it back after me. “Naw,” he says.

“You have a fine lawn, Mr. Adamchack,” I say.

“It’s a few blocks down,” he says as he flies by, his head down, the chromium handles on his lawn mower flashing in the sun, his dog whining.

As I turn to continue my walk I hear Mr. Adamchack switch off his mower. “You should cut your grass,” he says. “Your weeds are seeding my lawn.”

“I am truly sorry,” I assure him. “I will cut it.”

As I turn once again to the sidewalk, Johnny is almost upon me.

“Ooh,” he says, holding his head up slightly to squint at me from under his bloody brows.

“Ooh, indeed,” I say. “Hold your head up. The neighbors.”

“The neighbors are silly shits,” he says. “I’m going to the mailbox to drop off my tax forms. Going to The Steamer tonight?”

Johnny holds no fear for the neighbors, for he is one. “I doubt it,” I say.

“Harumph,” he says. “We really tied one on last night.”

“It seems so,” I answer.

“I think it’s a couple of blocks down,” he says before turning and continuing to stumble toward the mailbox.

Johnny and I drink together at The Steamer. The Steamer is really called The Finlandia, but specializes in steamed oysters, so everybody calls it The Steamer. Johnny says the oysters “put lead in your pencil.” Johnny and I are the neighborhood’s drunks and have been for years. We are allowed our roles but we are not supposed to let anyone know what they are.

Across the street Mrs. King is in her front yard digging in her garden. She grows vegetables there. Mrs. King is the neighborhood’s black person.

“Good morning, Mrs. King,” I shout across the road.

“Whoa, Caruso,” she hollers back. “Lay a little o’ that hallelujah on me.”

Mrs. King once rang my doorbell while I was in the middle of belting out the Hallelujah Chorus from the Messiah along with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. She was looking for one of her boys and thought maybe he was at my house with one of my girls.

“Hallelujah,” I say, crossing the street.

“Whoa, Caruso, you got to get your voice together.”

“What are you planting, Mrs. King?” I ask her. She is always interested in talk of her garden. Mrs. King won her garden, and the house and three boys, in a divorce settlement from her husband, the lawyer.

“The bones o’ that old black man,” she says, laughing.

“Racist, Mrs. King. Very racist,” I say.

“You seen any of my boys this morning?” she asks.

“No,” I say. Once, when her boys and my girls were a lot younger, her oldest son was playing at my house. I came inside and saw him on his knees in the hallway outside my oldest daughter’s bedroom door looking through the keyhole. “What are you doing?” I asked him. “Just looking,” he said. That was a long time ago. Now all her boys are juvenile delinquents in other neighborhoods. My daughters are doing things in other neighborhoods, too.

I have lately looked more critically at my oldest child and could see that, though she was still sleek like a child, she was no longer anyone’s daughter. It was the way she looked at herself in the mirror, the way she was concerned with her image. I felt a middle age fool there, looking at her, and have not done so in the same way again. Now, I stroll past her bolted door, impervious, no longer anyone’s father.

“What are you doing out and about so early?” Mrs. King wants to know.

“Just going for a walk,” I say quietly, but I can hear even the lawns hissing.

“Right,” she says through the din. “I saw it down on Birch.”

“You sure it wasn’t 68th?” I ask. “Someone else told me 68th.”

“No, Birch.” She turns back to her garden, smiling. Mrs. King smiles often, for she is a happy woman there, pawing the ground.

I have always wished that one of her boys and one of my girls would have been married. But I know that is impossible. Our children have all grown up in this screeching neighborhood. Besides, they hate each other.

Down toward the corner I see Betty come out of her house and then quickly turn around and go back inside. She doesn’t seem to see me, but I know she has. Betty and I had a little fling awhile back, when I was young and quick and joyful. Betty is one of those women who always looks like she’ll be handed a tribute at any moment. Even in the short glimpse I had of her I could see the wedges, khaki shorts and tight navy t-shirt. Her hair is long and very dark, combed and then mussed up just a bit. She looks like a clean empty bed, unmade but perfectly arranged.

As I spin once again into my easy stroll I feel the neighbors’ eyes upon me. They stare wildly, and I again grow erect, stately as I strut the grey slabs. The clamor from the gathered crowd rises as I walk through their bloody arena. They hope only that I will somehow be struck down.

On Birch I spot my car and turn toward it. But at the last second, as we grow nearer, I take a quick step to the side, raise my right arm, and let the car pass beneath it. The crowd roars.